Swarthmore Pride Planning Committee Hosts Public Events to Educate on Sexuality and Gender

SWARTHMORE, PA — From March 13th through April 13th, the Pride Planning Committee at Swarthmore College is hosting a series of events designed to celebrate and honor LGBTQ identities and history, reports Evangela Shread for the Swarthmore Phoenix.

Pride month, held nationally in June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, is ideally a time for marginalized voices to be brought to the forefront on college campuses such as Swarthmore.

“We want to make sure that we create a space for community for those within the LGBT community, but also [we want to provide] education both for allies and for people in the community who identify differently and don’t necessarily have the chance to connect and ask questions,” Nyk Robertson, the LGBTQ Fellow in the Swarthmore Intercultural Center, told the Swarthmore Phoenix.

The Pride Planning Committee started the month of educational events on March 13th with a panel composed of transgender or non-binary students titled “Queering the Gender Narrative.”

The Pride Committee was successful in arranging for several guest speakers to come to campus for a number of public, free events, including Malcolm Lazin, the executive director of the Philadelphia-based LGBT organization Equality Forum, and Andre Perez, the director of the transgender-themed documentary “America in Transition.”

The Director of the Intercultural Center Jason Rivera had similarly positive sentiments to share about Pride month with the Swarthmore Phoenix.

“I think it’s important to acknowledge … that there are very intentional opportunities to engage in dialogue about issues germane to the LGBTQ populations. I think this is an incredibly important and often unacknowledged outcome of Pride Month,” Rivera said.

Until 2014, Swarthmore hosted a queer- and transgender-themed conference every spring for LGBT students, faculty and staff.

“I think that it’s more important than ever that Pride Month try to do some of that work of uplifting the voices of more marginalized queer and trans people, just because there isn’t this big symposium that happens every year to do that,” Margaret Hughes, a member of the Pride Planning Committee and a board member of Swarthmore Queer Union (SQU) told the Phoenix.

All of the events listed that are open to the public can be tracked via our events calendar.

Read the full story about Swarthmore’s Pride Planning Committee and subsequent events at the Swarthmore Phoenix.